Category: Budget

Private education and training is the preferred choice of more than 50 per cent of students across Australia. It is highly innovative and responsive to the needs of industry. More than 2.2 million students choose to complete study or training with private providers in Australia.

The Student Choice Counts campaign is mobilising the community of students, employees and supporters of the private education and training sector against any policy change to limit student choice and undermine the viability of an important and competitive industry.

The risks:

Liberal and National parties and the ALP have announced major reviews and consultations into training and higher education. ACPET supports these measures but we need to make sure that outcomes do not penalise current or future students. Students must come first.

ALP policy announced during the election campaign would see an arbitrary cap on HELP training student loans, jeopardising student choice and affordability.

The ALP has also strongly indicated its intent to direct at least 70 per cent of funding to Government-owned TAFEs, stripping students of their right to study at their college of choice. TAFE alone cannot deliver the range of courses, to the number of students, in metropolitan, regional and rural locations across the country.

We support effective requirements to ensure only high quality providers can deliver public funded training.

24 June 2016 | Tertiary students studying at private higher education institutions are being unfairly and harshly penalised for their choice, according to the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET). ACPET CEO Rod Camm said students choosing private higher education providers were charged a 25 per cent fee payable on their student loans and denied access to Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs). ACPET is calling for both the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition to remove the 25 per cent fee payable on loans obtained through FEE-HELP which does not apply to university students accessing HECS-HELP. This reform would not only support greater student choice but address a fundamental inequity that has financially penalised some students simply because of their choice of higher education provider. This fee is simply indefensible….[ READ MORE ]….

23 June 2016 | Students from disadvantaged backgrounds risk being shut out of training under policy announced by the Australian Labor Party, according to the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET). ACPET CEO Rod Camm said that students whose only access to diploma level training was through student loans faced being shut out once more if proposed arbitrary caps on loan amounts were introduced. ACPET says that under Labor’s proposed $8,000 cap on training loans, many students from disadvantaged backgrounds will be turned away from training because they cannot afford to pay up-front fees. Camm says that ACPET members are concerned that, for many disadvantaged students, the threat this election is not just to choice, but their ability to access any sort of diploma level training at all….[READ MORE]….

17 June 2016 | The training choice of 2.2 million Australian students is at risk from outdated and ill-informed rhetoric from the Greens. The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) CEO Rod Camm said private training providers were an absolutely essential component of Australia’s training sector and the Green’s policy to stop all government funding to private providers posed enormous risk. The Australian training sector would collapse if private training providers were removed from the sector, he said….[ READ MORE]….

16 June 2016 | Australia needs a diverse higher education and training sector with quality private providers delivering choice and quality outcomes for students and employers. Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) CEO Rod Camm said student access to government funded training through quality private training providers was critical to meeting the future skill needs of Australia’s economy. “Private training has matured over the past 20 years and is the choice of employers and more than 2.2 million, or 57 per cent of Australian students, every year,” Mr Camm said. “Private training delivers strong job placement outcomes and delivers more flexible training options.”….[ READ MORE ]….

15 June 2016 | Private training providers have expressed their surprise and concern at yesterday’s Australian Labor Party (ALP) policy announcement to provide pre-apprenticeship training for 10,000 young people and to assist retrenched workers get their trade skills formally recognised. Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) CEO Rod Camm said that while improving pathways into apprenticeships was an important element in boosting the nation’s trade skills and providing real jobs, ACPET had considerable concerns about what the policy was really trying to do. “Continuing economic uncertainty and government training cuts have reduced the opportunities especially for our young job seekers” he said. “While the policy intent is supported, the ALP has missed an ideal opportunity to drive home the employment outcomes from this program by using private sector training providers. Put simply, private colleges have a proven ability to provide superior employment outcomes for job seekers and the ALP’s decision to only allocate funding to Government-run providers is a serious limitation.”….[ READ MORE ]….

9 June 2016 | Flexible learning, quality study programs and industry standard training are at risk for more than 2.2 million Australian students studying with private higher education and training providers each year. Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) Chief Executive Officer Rod Camm said private providers were an essential element of Australia’s higher education and training sector, offering students a wide choice of courses, flexible delivery options and access to industry professionals. “There are countless examples of how our members are meeting demand from Australia’s students and employers, right across the country,” he said….[ READ MORE ]….

8 June 2016 | Private training providers support the Australian Labor Party’s policy announcement to boost apprenticeship numbers if it wins the upcoming federal election. Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) CEO Rod Camm said apprenticeships and traineeships were key elements in providing jobs and skills, particularly for young people. “A combination of subdued economic circumstances and government training cuts have produced decade low levels of commencements which is reflected in the high unemployment levels amongst young job seekers,” he said. “Harnessing the government’s infrastructure program to boost apprenticeships and traineeships is an important step in boosting opportunities for those seeking a trade career.”….[ READ MORE ]….

27 May 2016 | Australia’s 2.2 million private education and training students are being urged to stand up for their right to choice during the Federal Election campaign. The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET), the national industry association for independent providers of post-compulsory education and training, is mobilising member, employer and student networks to address policy changes that would limit student choice and undermine the viability of a competitive industry. ACPET Chief Executive Officer Rod Camm said private education and training in Australia delivered jobs and growth, and provided nationally accredited and portable qualifications that delivered massive outcomes for the economy. However, the sector is under threat from reactionary policy changes that would punish both students and good quality private providers. “Policy announcements including an intention to direct the vast majority of vocational training funding to Government-run TAFEs and an arbitrary $8,000 cap on Help loans will strip students of their right to study at their college of choice,” Mr Camm said. “Suggestions that at least 70 per cent of funding will go to a Government-owned provider and that government will choose the courses that will be funded, and at what price, can only lead to another major public policy failure….[ READ MORE ]….

24 May 2016 | Students and industry would be the big losers under a Greens Party policy to lock out all private training providers from vocational education and training. Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) CEO Rod Camm said the proposal put forward by the Greens would be a disaster taking away students’ right to choose their training provider and their preferred course, whilst unfairly punishing high quality private training providers right across Australia. “This type of policy is exactly what ACPET is urging all parties to avoid this election. Students should be able to choose exactly where and what they want to study,” he said….[ READ MORE ]….

6 May 2016 | The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) has today warned that good quality training providers will be the victims of Labor’s unfair training loan caps, announced in Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s budget reply speech overnight. ACPET CEO Rod Camm has today questioned how such arbitrary change could be fair on students, and warned that a government imposed price of $8000, with no reference to market forces, would punish good quality private training providers and put thousands of jobs in the private training sector at risk….[ READ MORE ]….

4 May 2016

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As we draw nearer the election, the findings of a recent ANU opinion poll ought to resonate with the politicians, as ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt observes – particularly those given to characterising the “politics of equity” as the “politics of envy” (that being our observation, not Schmidt’s). It is unlikey to though: with the political class, only two polls count – Newspoll and the actual poll on 2 July.

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The ANU School of Politics & International Relations regularly conducts national telephone opinion polls on issues of political and social significance. The latest, the 21st in the series, was on the issue of tax and equity. Should we be worried about governments holding debt? Which areas of spending should have priority, and which can be cut? Should we pay more tax, or less? Is our tax system generally fair?

More Australians favour greater spending on social services than favour reducing taxes. If reducing government debt is the aim, cutting welfare payments is among the least popular options, according to this poll. Australians want more spending directed to health, domestic violence prevention, education, and disability and aged care. They want international companies operating in Australia to pay more tax here, but overall believe our tax system is moderately fair.

On education, around 80% thought the government should spend more money on education, just 2.2% of Australians polled nominated education as “the most important problem” facing Australia today. It ranked thirteen, way behind the economy and jobs (27.2%), just ahead of law and order (1.8) and somewhat ahead of taxation (1.2%) and the budget (1%), although at the levels of granularity involved, these rankings may not be entirely reliable.

Like this:

4 May 2016 | The government has pushed consideration of proposed university reforms, including a 20% cut in funding, out beyond the election, until 1 January 2018. While it has ruled out full fee deregulation, it has released an options paper, to guide a consultation process, canvassing a range of alternative fee measures which would still see substantial fee rises. The 2016 Budget also sees an efficiency dividend of $1.2 billion on legislated dropped but the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program has been cut by $152 million to $553 million over four years. The Office of Learning and Teaching has been abolished, with the resulting $18 million in savings going to TEQSA and the Quality Indicators in Learning and Teaching website. The consultation paper presages changes to FEE-HELP, including dropping the repayment threshold from around $54,000 to something in the range of $40, 000 to $45,000. Over $2.5 billion dollars in unlegislated funding cuts remain on the books….[ MORE]….

4 May 2016 | The federal government has proposed a set of tougher measures to fix the VET FEE-HELP blow-out in a discussion paper released on 29 April. The minister for vocational education and skills senator Scott Ryan said the paper will pave the way for a full redesign of the scheme. The discussion paper catalogues the scale of malpractice by some providers, such as the targeting of low socio-economic status and vulnerable people with inducements to enroll and misleading potential students about their repayment commitments. It proposes a series of measures to improve the integrity of the system including minimum eligibility requirements for VET FEE-HELP, reductions in the lifetime student loan limit, a narrower range of eligible courses, a VET FEE-HELP ombudsman, and payments tied to compliance and student progression….[ READ MORE ]….

4 May 2016 | With international education worth nearly $20 billion to the Australian economy in 2015, the government has provided $12 million in the Budget to fund the National Strategy for International Education 2025 released on 30 April. In three parts, the strategy identifies international educationas one of five “super growth sectors” that will help complete Australia’s transition from a resource-based economy to a modern services and knowledge economy. The strategy aims to help grow the sector by 50% to 720,000 international students by 2025. A separate economic study indicates that international education supports over 130,000 jobs across Australian and delivers substantial indirect benefits to other industries such as tourism and retail….[ READ MORE]….

28 April 2016 | Ivan Brown, who ran one of Australia’s fastest-growing vocational colleges, Phoenix Institute, is being investigated for allegedly forging documents to reap more than $100 million in taxpayer funds. Federal Police search warrants say they have “reasonable grounds for suspecting” Brown, the made false documents or caused them to be made “with the intention to influence the Commonwealth to accept on-line students as genuinely enrolled and participating in training”. Meanwhile a report by the failed company’s administrator claims that the education department owes ACN $253 million for people signed up to courses of study. It also shows that ACN paid its brokers between 15 and 30 % of the value of its courses to the salesmen who recruited students – up to $12,000 per sign up.…[ READ MORE ]…

4 May 2016

As we draw nearer the election, the findings of a recent ANU opinion poll ought to resonate with the politicians, as ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt observes – particularly those given to characterising the “politics of equity” as the “politics of envy” (that being our observation, not Schmidt’s). It is unlikey to though: with the political class, only two polls count – Newspoll and the actual poll on 2 July.

……..

The ANU School of Politics & International Relations regularly conducts national telephone opinion polls on issues of political and social significance. The latest, the 21st in the series, was on the issue of tax and equity. Should we be worried about governments holding debt? Which areas of spending should have priority, and which can be cut? Should we pay more tax, or less? Is our tax system generally fair?

More Australians favour greater spending on social services than favour reducing taxes. If reducing government debt is the aim, cutting welfare payments is among the least popular options, according to this poll. Australians want more spending directed to health, domestic violence prevention, education, and disability and aged care. They want international companies operating in Australia to pay more tax here, but overall believe our tax system is moderately fair.

On education, around 80% thought the government should spend more money on education, just 2.2% of Australians polled nominated education as “the most important problem” facing Australia today. It ranked thirteen, way behind the economy and jobs (27.2%), just ahead of law and order (1.8) and somewhat ahead of taxation (1.2%) and the budget (1%), although at the levels of granularity involved, these rankings may not be entirely reliable.

Higher education in policy paralysis

What now? asks Gavin Moodie (RMIT) in The Conversation. While across-the-board full fee deregulation has now been dumped by the Coalition, fee deregulation of so-called “flagship courses”, first mooted in the Review of Base Funding in 2011 (with the significant qualification that such fees be capped at plus 50% above what they would otherwise be), looks a hot prospect for a re-elected Coalition government (as does a raising of the cap on other courses by some percentage). That is, of course, still moot: an incoming Labor government would be ostensibly committed to additional public investment in higher education. Whichever side wins will have its hands full, And there’s the likely prospect that whatever the colour of the government, it will not have a majority in the Senate.

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This year’s budget set us back to 2014. In the 2014 budget, the government announced that fees would be deregulated. While this was a toxic political move, it wasn’t toxic enough to be dumped from the 2015 budget, which was another lost year for higher education. While, this year, the government finally ruled out full fee deregulation, it is still contemplating uncapped fees for some courses in its higher education consultation paper. It has also dropped all the worthwhile proposals from 2014, such as extending the demand-driven system to sub-baccalaureate programs..

Salutary lessons from overseas

High caps and deregulated fees

5 May 2016

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As we begin to address again the issues of university funding, the relative student contribution and student loans, it’s salutary to look to overseas experiences. In the England, the Cameron government didn’t fully deregulate fees, it merely tripled them. There are now real questions as to whether students are getting deal (“value fro money”). Meanwhile in the US, home of the $100,000 degree, the affordability of higher education is said to be a “crisis” and is key issue in the forthcoming presidential election campaign, at least from the Democrat side. And we would do well to heed the advice of Swinburne University vice-chancellor Linda Kristjanson

We should be wary of significant changes to the funding model which would detract from the egalitarian quality of Australian higher education.

The crisis of college affordability may not be solvable by the federal government: It has had much less control over tuition than state policies.

The nap pods that popped up recently at the University of California, Berkeley, may be exacerbating a problem they were designed to fix. Intended to help relieve student stress, the egg-like pods cost approximately $100,000 total. A significant student stressor at Cal is rising tuition, and while the pods add up to about $3 per student, paid for in student health fees, the symbolism is galling to students who will graduate with as much debt as the pods cost.

As the editors of The Daily Cal, the university’s student paper, wrote, students aren’t sleep-deprived because of lack of beds but “because of the overwhelming pressures they face.” More naps do nothing for mounting student fees, and the pods appear to ignore deeper structural reasons for student stress: The average Berkeley student leaves the school more than $17,000 in debt (the national average is $29,000, for public and private colleges).

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4 May 2016

A lecture on quantum physics

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During Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in April 2016, a journalist jokingly asked the Prime Minister to explain quantum computing. He called their bluff with a spot-on explanation.

What now? asks Gavin Moodie (RMIT) in The Conversation. While across-the-board full fee deregulation has now been dumped by the Coalition, fee deregulation of so-called “flagship courses”, first mooted in the Review of Base Funding in 2011 (with the significant qualification that such fees be capped at plus 50% above what they would otherwise be), looks a hot prospect for a re-elected Coalition government (as does a raising of the cap on other courses by some percentage). That is, of course, still moot: an incoming Labor government would be ostensibly committed to additional public investment in higher education. Whichever side wins will have its hands full, And there’s the likely prospect that whatever the colour of the government, it will not have a majority in the Senate.

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This year’s budget set us back to 2014. In the 2014 budget, the government announced that fees would be deregulated. While this was a toxic political move, it wasn’t toxic enough to be dumped from the 2015 budget, which was another lost year for higher education. While, this year, the government finally ruled out full fee deregulation, it is still contemplating uncapped fees for some courses in its higher education consultation paper. It has also dropped all the worthwhile proposals from 2014, such as extending the demand-driven system to sub-baccalaureate programs.

Cuts and government values

As expected, the government added cuts of A$152.2 million over four years, or 22%, from the Higher Education Participation Program – which funds universities to bring in students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. It also cut $20.9 million over four years by closing the Office for Learning and Teaching, which supported scholarship on major improvements to teaching and learning.

All that remains is $4.5 million a year for good teaching awards. As valuable as these are, they recognise individual performance rather than disseminate good practice throughout the sector.

While the government has relegated the improvement of teaching and learning to universities, it has increased funding for co-operative research centres by $46 million, or 32%, by 2020.

This reinforces the view that while teaching and learning is universities’ most important role, in national policy, it is very much a second priority to research.

Running, jumping, standing still

Rather than announcing any changes, the government released a consultation paper on proposals for tackling many of higher education’s unresolved issues.

While the sector generally welcomes the belated consultation, as the government is moving the election forward to July 2, it doesn’t have any time before the election to progress any of the options it canvasses.

The government, from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull, has spent a whole term in higher education policy paralysis.

The reform options being discussed – deregulating fees for some courses

Nonetheless, the Coalition is still contemplating uncapped fees, initially for only some courses that would be proposed by universities.

The government’s consultation paper states that it is:

… committed to providing universities with additional flexibility to innovate, differentiate themselves and offer students more choice and higher quality offerings.

The paper suggests that giving:

… universities flexibility to attract additional revenue in courses where they have developed particular expertise would enable them to innovate and differentiate themselves and pursue their individual vision for higher education excellence.

While the government adopts from the 2011 higher education base funding review the term “flagship courses” for programs with uncapped fees, its proposals are markedly different from those recommended by that review.

It recommended that funding for flagship programs be increased by up to 50%, with the additional funding “met through a matched increase in both government and student contributions”.

In contrast, the consultation paper proposes that government funding for flagship programs be cut and that fees be uncapped and monitored by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or be approved by an independent body.

If they don’t cause too many problems, the flagships will become a fleet of deregulated fees. The government will expose itself to similar problems that arose from 2009 when the then-Labor government relaxed conditions for the loan program for vocational diplomas, called VET FEE-HELP.

As successive governments found in trying to curb the runaway explosion of VET FEE-HELP loans, doubtful debt and scams, withdrawing concessions is much harder than granting them.

If a re-elected Coalition government manages to uncap fees for some programs from 2018 there should be a simple but strong mechanism for returning fees to their caps should the experiment go as badly wrong as many fear.

Ideas for how to reduced student loan debt

The higher education consultation paper has several proposals to reduce the cost to government of the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP):

restrict the availability of HELP loans or Commonwealth subsidies to those who have left the workforce permanently;

recover outstanding loan amounts from deceased estates; and

remove the HECS-HELP benefit, which reduces HELP repayments for education, nursing and other graduates working in a related occupation.

Before the budget, the government released a discussion paper on redesigning VET FEE-HELP, which proposes several measures to end the scamming of the program.

As a result of these measures, and the withdrawal of the decision to uncap fees, the government estimates that the proportion of new debt not expected to be repaid in 2017 is 18%. This is markedly down from the 21% estimated in last year’s budget and the 23% in the 2014 budget.

Gavin will be on hand for an Author Q&A between 11am and noon AEST on Thursday May 4, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comment section below.

The federal government has proposed a set of tougher measures to fix the VET FEE-HELP blow-out in a discussion paper released on 29 April. The minister for vocational education and skills senator Scott Ryan said the paper will pave the way for a full redesign of the scheme.

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The discussion paper catalogues the scale of malpractice by some providers, such as the targeting of low socio-economic status and vulnerable people with inducements to enroll and misleading potential students about their repayment commitments.

The paper reveals that a small number of VET FEE-HELP providers dominate the scheme. In 2015, ten providers accounted for more than half of all VET FEE-HELP loans.

It also reveals that a small number of courses draw a large proportion of VET FEE-HELP funding.

The paper notes it is “not uncommon” to observe significant differences in course prices for students accessing VET FEE-HELP compared to those accessing a state and territory government subsidised program for the same qualification.

VET FEE-HELP costs reached $2.9 billion in 2015, with private providers accounting for $2.46 billion or 84% of the total.

The discussion paper proposes a series of measures to improve the integrity of the system:

The application of minimum eligibility requirements for VET FEE-HELP recipients.

Reducing the lifetime student loan limit from $99,389.

Placing a fundi g cap on the scheme overall and

Prioritising VET FEE-HELP funding to courses that align with industry needs or lead to employment outcomes.

Providing better information for VET FEE-HELP eligible students before they enrol.

Establishing a VET FEE-HELP ombudsman.

Redesigning the regulatory oversight of VET FEE-HELP, giving the Commonwealth more power to tie payments to compliance measures.

Consideration of different payment tests around student engagement, progression and completion.

The VET FEE-HELP scheme, introduced by Labor, was demand driven, uncapped and had insufficient student protections in place. The original scheme opened the floodgates to shonky training providers and predatory brokers to take advantage of the system.

Labor’s spokesperson Sharon Bird said the VET FEE-HELP discussion paper offers no new solutions to stop the unprecedented waste of taxpayers’ money occurring in the VET sector. It recommends many of the amendments which Labor moved to implement in late 2015 and which the government voted down. She said as a result the rorts will continue until such time as a new Parliament deals with any legislation.

The government has pushed consideration of proposed university reforms, including a 20% cut in funding, out beyond the election, until 1 January 2018 and it has ruled out full fee deregulation. It has released an options paper, to guide a consultation process, canvassing a range of alternative fee measures.

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The 2016 Budget also sees an efficiency dividend of $1.2 billion on legislated dropped but the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program has been cut by $152 million to $553 million over four years. The Office of Learning and Teaching has been abolished, with the resulting $18 million in savings going to TEQSA and the Quality Indicators in Learning and Teaching website.

The deferral of the university reforms, pending the outcome of a consultation process, is chimerical, intended to neutralise, as far as possible, university funding and student fee subsidies as an election issue. As quite clearly set out in the options paper, a re-elected Coalition government can be expected to enthusiastically pursue its agenda of reducing public funding to higher education and shifting a greater proportion to students, merely by means other than those originally proposed by Christopher Pyne.

As stated in the paper, in finalising legislative reforms the government will need to adjust subsidy and student contribution rates to meet the financial sustainability savings outlined in the Budget. Over $2.5 billion dollars in unlegislated funding cuts remain stubbornly on the books, despite having failed twice to pass the Senate in this term. The options presented for the next term, “dependent on other structural savings or expense measures adopted as part of these reforms” (which provides a little wriggle room as to the precise form of reform), are:

reduce the Government’s contribution by 20% on average, as first proposed in the
2014-15 Budget

a “small” reduction in the government grant per student, and a “small” increase in the maximum capped student contribution that institutions may charge, such that students and taxpayers contribute equally to the cost of higher education courses (on average).

Sounds a lot like the last plan, with the meaning of “small” being in the eye of the beholder.

In giving universities the “flexibility to innovate”, the paper refers approvingly to the notion of “flagship courses”, as originally proposed in the report of the Review of Base Funding in 2011. Under this scheme, universities would be:

….given the freedom to set fees for a small cohort of their students enrolled in identified high quality, innovative courses. This would deliver the benefits of differentiation, excellence and innovation among universities while giving certainty to all Australians that they could still access fee capped places.

As to non-flagship courses, while fees would not be fully deregulated, they could be partially deregulated by a substantial lifting of caps: and it would need to be substantial (50% or more?) to allow for the emergence of the innovation and differentiation between universities which purportedly drives this reform agenda (rather than budget issues).

Still, blessedly perhaps, graduates are certain to have somewhat more time to pay down their student debt. The consultation paper presages changes to FEE-HELP, including dropping the repayment threshold from around $54,000 to something in the range of $40, 000 to $45,000. There’s also some likelihood of the introduction of a hefty loan fee. The paper notes that, currently, HECS-HELP loans have no loan fee, while FEE-HELP undergraduate loans and VET FEE-HELP loans attract a 25% and 20% fee respectively. While the government has previously proposed to remove the loan fees to create a level playing field for students and providers in all sectors, the paper notes that “charging a loan fee for all loans would provide an efficient mechanism to help defray the costs of running HELP”:

….a loan fee of 20% as currently applies to VET FEE-HELP would enable the Government to recover most of the costs associated with debt not expected to be repaid. It would similarly provide for greater equity and reduce the cost pressures for undergraduate FEE-HELP students but with a greater increase in costs for students in Commonwealth supported places.

The 2014-15 Budget proposed a number of measures to expand opportunity and choice for students, including the extension of Commonwealth support to all undergraduate courses at all registered higher education providers and the uncapping of places in sub-bachelor courses at public universities. While these reforms are still provided for in the Budget, extension to non-university providers is seemingly off the agenda, “noting that growth in enrolments has continued to increase at non-university providers despite the absence of Commonwealth funding” (which won’t matter as much, if at all, if a loan fee is introduced for FEE-HELP and fees hiked). It’s also looking that uncapping places in sub-bachelor courses is unlikely in the near future.

The government is appointing an expert panel to advise it on reform options.

Set to explode in absence of change

7 April 2016

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As the Turnbull government ponders a higher education policy to take to the 2016 election, it’s been given food for thought by a research report revealing explosive growth of 560% in FEE-HELP debt over the next decade – on current policy settings. Obviously this portends a change to current policy settings.

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HELP loan -annual cost on an underlying cash basis

The independent Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report finds that the loans scheme will cost the budget $11.1 billion by 2025-26, up from $1.7 billion currently. This amount covers the scheme’s concessional interest rates and the increasing proportion of loans that will never be repaid. It projects the total nominal value of student loans program (the cumulative value of the portfolio) will grow from around $60 billion now to $185 billion by 2026.

The amount never to be repaid on loans issued is predicted to exceed $4 billion — up from $1.9 billion expected from loans issued last financial year.

The public debt interest payments associated with financing the FEE-HELP portfolio as a proportion of the Australian Government’s total public debt interest payments is projected to rise from 15.4% in 2016 to 46.3% in 2026.

The PBO attributes the uncapping of university places over the period 2010- 2012 and the expansion of loans to vocational students as driving growth in FEE-HELP debt since 2010.

Student numbers (equivalent full-time student load)

But according to the report, implementation of the Coalition’s stalled program to cut university funding and deregulate fees would fuel explosive growth in debt over the next decade:

The size of the HELP loan portfolio is projected to grow rapidly through to 2025-26, driven mainly by projected increases in student fees from 2017 due to the announced higher education reforms. The reforms recognised that the lower direct subsidies from the government would mean that student contributions would rise. Under the reform package, higher student contributions could be expected to see an expansion in the HELP loan portfolio in the form of larger HELP loans.

Extension of FEE-HELP to sub-degree HE programs and to non-university higher education providers would further drive growth in student debt.

Education minister Simon Birmingham says more details of the Government’s higher education policy will be unveiled before the election, as he recommits to de-regulating the sector.

Birmingham confirmed the Federal Government remained committed to finding savings, particularly in light of the PBO report.

Birmingham told the ABC’s 7.30 program talks are continuing with the university sector about the best way to manage the issue, and promised more details before voters go to the polls.

We’ll have more to say ahead of the election about higher education policy and we’ll make sure that Australians understand what we’re doing, the reasons why we’re doing it.

Our universities do need to be able to differentiate between each other, to innovate on the world stage, and that of course does require a certain degree of latitude for them in terms of how they structure their course and how they finance their courses to some extent.

He warned against “hysterical” debate about the size of the debt and the level of doubtful debts, saying the real issue was the flow of payments. Professor Chapman said it was always expected that 15-20 per cent of loans would not be repaid, as it was aimed at people who achieved higher earnings as a result of their education. However, he said there was a case for lowering the threshold at which students started repaying loans by about $10,000.

He pointed out the PBO’s analysis ­assumed that the government’s 2014-15 budget reforms, which has been blocked by the Senate, would be fully implemented, which is highly unlikely.

The Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton also proposes that the repayment threshold be cut to $42,000. He says a major cause of HELP’s problems is that a growing proportion of all graduates work part-time, but most part-time jobs earn less than the current threshold. In addition, vocational education diploma students now get HELP, and are less likely than higher education graduates to earn the repayment threshold of $54,126 or more.

While he acknowledges such a cut would affect more women than men, due to high rates of part-time work, he says half of the debtors who would be affected live with a partner, and the combined disposable income of 70% of these couples exceeds $80,000 a year.

Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson says universities are open to changes for university loans, but only if the HECS-HELP scheme remains fundamentally intact, “to ensure that those with the ability to study at university are not impeded and not deterred from doing so”:

It’s really important to understand the value of the student loan scheme that we have in Australia.

It has been an absolutely central feature of the success of higher education policy in Australia for many, many years.

She says making the scheme sustainable can be achieved by:

Cleaning up the well-documented problems in the VET-FEE HELP scheme;

Dropping the proposed 20% cut to university funding as “a false economy”; and

Exploring HELP debt recovery options that do not undermine the fundamental policy intent or objectives of the scheme (as discussed in thepolicy statement Keep It Clever).

There’s a lot to catch up with but, as they say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (which is, according to the estimable Wiktionary, an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”), meaning “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”)

VET FEE-HELP

As previously reported, changes to the VET FEE-HELP (VFH) scheme legislated late last year provides some better protection of students from the carpetbaggers who have looted the scheme and dudded the students. The government proposes to spend this year look at ways to rort-proof it from the likes of Phoenix. But as so many people have asked: how did it get to this?

Part of the answer is a near pathological obsession by governments – of all stripes – with “deregulation” and “marketisation”. As former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chair observed last year, “…..this huge waste of government money is the “inevitable consequence” of governments funding the private sector to deliver a public good. From the home insulation debacle to export market development grants, film industry tax incentives, health and education subsidies, Samuel says the same thing has been happening “as long as I’ve been alive”:

Business is much, much smarter than governments, and business knows how to exploit and you can’t deal with that using people sitting in Canberra or Spring Street. The rogues – and they’ll be there in any industry – they say with glee, all the way to the bank, ‘Come in spinner’!”

This is not to argue against competition and a role for private providers but you have to have, among other things, a robust regulatory system. Quite evidently, this has not been the case.

Under its legislation, ASQA has a broad power to cancel qualifications where it is satisfied of certain matters, including where it is satisfied that a RTO did not provide the assessment necessary for a student to demonstrate they have achieved the relevant learning outcomes…..To date, ASQA and its predecessor VET regulators have not implemented the wholesale cancellation of qualifications as part of their regulatory approaches. In the four years since its establishment, ASQA has exercised this power sparingly, involving approximately seven RTOs (or former RTOs), 350 individuals, 250 qualifications and 225 statements of attainment.

ASQA has broad powers generally but has been timid in exercising them, seemingly because of the costs. The same discussion paper notes:

A series of civil penalty provisions is set out in the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 (NVETR). Where one of these is breached, ASQA make seek a civil penalty order through the courts. This is likely the strongest of the enforcement options available to ASQA.

The relative failure of ASQA to rein in rorters may have spared its budget but has led to massive costs for the public purse and for individuals. It’s been left to the ACCC to take on the rorters (see).

And it seems that there’s been a fair dollop of administrative incompetence, as well. A recent ABC Background Briefingrevealed a “communication breakdown”, whereby the Commonwealth education department did not share VFH data with ASQA until early 2015. Such data might have allowed ASQA to judge which training organisations were growing fastest and therefore posed a high regulatory risk. ASQA has strongly refuted that there was a breakdown of any consequence and points out that, “following liaison with DET”, it launched a targeted program of 21 audits of training providers approved to offer courses under VET FEE-HELP. Three RTOs were assessed as being critically non-compliant with the requirements of the VET Quality Framework at the conclusion of the audit process and, following a ‘show cause’ process, had their registrations cancelled. These RTOs were:

Unique International College

Cornerstone (Empower)

Australian Institute of Professional Education.

In addition, ASQA has cancelled the registration of the Phoenix Institute.

Each of these for four “providers” have been hauled by the ACCC into the Federal Court, along with Acquire Learning, which is an education broker, for among other things, allegedly making “false and misleading statements and engaging in “unconscionable conduct”. The ACCC is seeking recovery of VFH payments and cancellation of VFH student debts. Just to give you the flavour of this, in 2014 Cornerstone’s Empower Institute enrolled 5,000 students, charging them about $15,000 for an online business diploma course. It received $46 million in VET FEE-HELP payments and graduated just 5 students: that’s right, nearly $10 million a pop!

Separate to this, the Aspire group of colleges – Aspire College of Education, The Design Works College of Design, the Australian Indigenous College and the affiliated RTO Services Group and National Training and Development – collapsed in mid-February, affecting thousands of students. With 20 campuses across Australia, the group had $83 million in revenue in 2014-2015 – mostly through VET FEE-HELP payments. Fairfax Media reported that the group had been recently audited by ASQA and found to be compliant.

VET funding

A sustainable and realistic funding model is another prerequisite of an effective VET system. In real terms, VET funding has been declining for years. According to the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services, that trend continues: recurrent funding for the VET sector by Commonwealth, state and territory governments totalled $5.2 billion in 2014, a 12 % cut from 2013.

VET assessment

The discussion paper referred to above, in the context of ASQA’s performance, is actually about improving VET assessment practices which I don’t think is a particular issue at this stage. As I told The Australian, and we’ll leave it at that:

Brendan Sheehan said any moves to limit the reputational damage caused to the VET sector by rorting private colleges was welcome, but (he) doubted changing rules around assessment would have any real impact. He said strong policing of the sector and rule changes to ensure dodgy colleges repay government subsidies and VET FEE-HELP advances, such as was now happening in Victoria, would have a much more direct and permanent impact.

The paper suggests that having specialist trainers and teachers who require a diploma to do assessments would have a positive impact. But the real problems lie with online training and companies that have ripped billions out of VET FEE-HELP. I’m not sure if the overall quality of assessment is the actual big issue. Sure, it’s part of it, but it’s not the whole story.

Assessment is hardly the problem when you’ve got outfits like Empower getting just 0.125% of their enrolled students to completion of their courses.

The national market

The drive to create an effective and efficient national training market, enthusiastically embraced by the former Gillard Commonwealth government, spurred on by the innovative approach of the former Victorian Brumby government, has been less than successful (see everything above). A series of NCVER papers shows that what we’ve ended up with is a “hotchpotch of eligibility rules, fees ,subsidies course lists and contract settings”:

Kaye Bowman, first author of all four papers said the differences fly in the face of two decades of reform aimed at building a nationally co-ordinated training system. And they jeopardised course quality, TAFE sustainability and the supply of key skills. Dr Bowman said the entitlement, which guaranteed Australians training at certificate III level, had started out as a narrowly focused equity measure for young people but was extended to older people, retrenched workers and career changers, with every jurisdiction crafting the scheme differently.

Appointments

Leanne Cover, formerly a senior executive in the ACT department of education, has been appointed as CEO of the Canberra Institute of Technology.

Trevor Schwenke, formerly general manager of TAFE Queensland South West, has been appointed CEO of Bendigo Kangan Institute.

The annual ATAR hullaballoo

In January, we had the now annual hullaballoo over the efficacy or otherwise of ATARs as some standard for gaining admission to a university, sparked this year by the decision of some Victorian universities not to publish “clearly in” ATARS for three-quarters of course offers (the point at which a student with a certain will definitely get an offer for course – and may get an with a lesser ATAR anyway). Victoria University’s vice-chancellor Peter Dawkins “boldly stated that ATAR cut-off scores are very often a meaningless piece of information”. Backing him up was Swinburne University’s vice-chancellor Linda Kristjanson, who is also chair of the Victorian Vice-Chancellors Committee.

We really are in a post-ATAR stage. The ATAR is a very blunt and imperfect instrument.

Under a proposed new model, students at Templestowe College will be given the option of applying for any course at Swinburne University without an ATAR. Entry into the university’s courses – which will include the full gamut of undergraduate degrees – will be based on new measures of student ability: grit, leadership and strong inter-personal skills.

The fact is that that in the demand driven system, where universities will receive funding for every student they enroll, the ATAR is of decreasing direct relevance, though not altogether irrelevant, as a selection tool. The growth in participation in higher education sparks a rather pointless controversy over declining “entry standards”, typified this year by a breathless bit of analysis in the Sydney Morning Herald – NSW universities taking students with ATARs as low as 30.

But as The Scan observed way back in January 2013, why it should come as a surprise to any ATARs for university admission have on average declined in recent years is itself a surprise. The whole point of the reforms arising out of the Bradley Review process in 2008 was is to

To the extent that you achieve one goal, all things being equal (for example, #2 isn’t achieved at the expense of some other group) you also achieve the other. And the overall effect must be that, “on average”, a lower ATAR than had hitherto been necessary (or no ATAR at all) will get some more applicants into a university course than had previously been the case (though not into any university course at any university).

That is, the policy, seemingly, is achieving exactly what it is supposed to achieve.

In 2013, just over a third of university offers were based ATAR as the sole determining factor, and it would be somewhat less now, as universities such as Swinburne, and just about every other university (even Go8 universities), move to more broadly based entrance assessment processes. Next year, UNSW Law School, ranked last year one of the best in Australia and 15th best in the world, is introducing a Law Admission Test (you’re still going to need a pretty good ATAR).

A recent article by the Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton shows that stories such as that run in the Sydney Morning Herald are something of a beat-up: final enrolments of 50 or below ATARs from 2013 school leavers in 2014 were only 3% of the school leaver cohort (although total low-ATAR enrolment is higher than this, due to students who finished school in other years). Norton doesn’t entirely discount the usefulness ATAR and ATAR cut-offs/clearly-ins in giving students insight into their possible options (including vocational education and training).

Review of admission transparency

Nevertheless, Commonwealth education minister Simon Birmingham bought into the debate during his address to the Universities Australia Conference (see below), saying that with rapid growth in enrolments under the demand-driven system over recent years there’s a need ensure the system remains sustainable and uncompromising on quality. He asked why, if there’s no an issue, “why do so many people expend so much annual energy on this (issue)?” On the matter of publishing reliable clearly-in data, it’s a matter of transparency:

Students need to have confidence that they know what the real requirements for admission are; not some artificial measure that bears no resemblance to reality… (current)entry requirements are perhaps as opaque sometimes as a double frosted window.

The coming date with electoral destiny

It won’t have escaped your notice that we are careening towards a Federal election. As former ALP factional enforcer Graham Richardson recently observed, on the assumption that Malcom Turnbull is not stupid, then the introduction of the Senate voting reforms must mean a double dissolution on 2 July. On the basis that Turnbull has so peed off most of the crossbench, to leave 6 of the troublesome 7 in place for the next term by not having a double dissolution would indeed be stupid (former Victorian DLP Senator John Madigan term expires, anyway and he will surely go down; SA independent Nick Xenophon supports the reforms).

The unusually long campaign (a 51 day campaign rather than the usual 31 day campaign of modern times) is tricky for the government, assuming the election is the government’s to lose (normally the case for a first term government). There’s plenty of scope for stumbles, stuff ups and scares.

The Budget isn’t too tricky an issue as the government doesn’t actually need to bring down and pass a formal Budget: there wouldn’t be time anyway. What the government needs to do is secure supply to fund the ordinary services of government: a huge swathe of Commonwealth expenditure is covered outside of the supply bills these days anyway, through standing appropriations and special appropriations contained in separate legislation (for example, university funding is provided for under the Higher Education Support Act 2003). Despite the government wanting to fight the election around industrial relations issues, budget issues are going to figure prominently, whenever the election is held, so the government may as well make a virtue out of necessity and use the work it’s being doing on the Budget as its economic policy and release details through the course of the campaign.

Policy directions

I’m not bold enough to predict the winner (although Labor has the harder task ahead of it, there’s no lay down miserein the offing, as seemed the case a few months back), but I’m bold enough to state that when the incoming prime minister meets with PM&C and Treasury officials in the afternoon of 3 July and is handed the Incoming Government Briefing Book (Blue Book for the Coalition, Red Book for Labor), you can be reasonably certain higher education will have a prominent chapter. After all, the $20 billion in savings linked to the original deregulation package, including a 20% cut to course funding, remain in the budget projections. How are the parties going to deal with that issue: the savings are either there or they’re not, and if they’re not there, they just can’t be booked into the future, ad infinitum.

Labor’s announced a largely “steady as she goes” course – notably, no funding cuts, no fee deregulation. Universities Australia is pushing for more detail and more dollars, so we’ll have to see if Labor has anything further to say or promise (we wouldn’t think much in the way of promises these straitened times – perhaps a few vague promises about getting higher education spending to the OECD average “over time”).

As for the Coalition, some reformulation of the failed higher education “reform package” will be in the Blue Book. In his speech to the Universities Australia Conference Commonwealth education minister Simon Birmingham said the government “continues to believe that some reform is necessary”:

Our government continues to believe that some reform is necessary. Reform is necessary to support innovation, both within our universities and beyond. Reform is necessary to support the provision of pathways that enhance equitable access. Reform is necessary to protect our reputation for high quality. And yes, reform is necessary to support federal budget sustainability.

But what actually happens will depend entirely on the composition of the new Senate, which won’t be known until some weeks after the election. If there is a Coalition Senate majority, expect game back on for the packages that failed to pass the Senate in 2014 and 2015. Labor hardheads figure that the combination of a double dissolution and Senate voting reform creates that possibility – but it was, of course, these same hardheads (together with their counterparts in the Coalition and the Greens) who negotiated the preference deals that parachuted the micro-parties into the Senate in the first place. I don’t think you could boldly state anything about the composition of the post-election Senate: who knows what unexpected results the new Senate voting system might throw up, what are the Greens going to do with Senate preferences (while Senate preferencing will be of considerably less value, they won’t want to jeopardise their own balance of power possibilities). And what will Greens voters do – whatever Greens leaders advocate, Greens voters are hardly likely to be inclined to support with their preferences the party that cut the tax, stopped the boats, are stalling on same sex marriage and all the rest.

In his speech to the UA Conference (which was mainly about research, innovation and collaboration), UA chair Barney Glover set out in broad terms the university sector’s policy agenda for this election year. He prefaced his comments with the observation that the sector has been subject almost 2 years of policy insecurity and uncertainty which has taken a toll on the ability of universities to plan and allocate resources (it’s actually more like 4 years, taking into account the churn that was going on in the latter days of the Gillard government). He called on the parties to clearly articulate:

the principles that guide and the objectives to be achieved by their higher education policies;

the key reforms that will deliver those objectives;

the proposed means for delivering a sustainable and stable higher education system; and,

the implications of these policies for students, universities, industry and government itself over the longer term.

In October last year, Universities Australia released its policy statement – Keep it clever 2016. This sets out in detail the context of its policy agenda (“universities are really important to the nation’s present and future security and well being”); what’s needed to drive research and innovation; public funding support for students; and government support for international education.

In his speech to, Glover declared:

The sector will never accept that maintaining the level of quality expected by our students, employers and the community can be achieved through reducing the level public investment in universities.

Well, as represented by UA, reducing public investment in universities was exactly what the sector signed up for in 2014, albeit with some disgruntlement in the ranks. And the Keep it clever document is a little less definitive: the policy is not stated as “never accept” but as:

Universities need government to ensure, in the short-term, that there is no decline in the level of per student funding for government supported student places….

In the short-termis a rather significant qualifying statement. So, it all begins again.

This year’s top ten reads were heavily skewed towards the “VET crisis” and attempts by authorities (rather belatedly in our view) to stamp out the obvious rorting, particularly in VET FEE-HELP funding, which has been truly scandalous. In fact, the number one post this year on The Scan is also the number one post of all time and by quite a bit. If you enter “rorting” in the search box in the top right hand corner, the archive runs to 5 pages, VET FEE-HELP runs to another 5 pages (obviously with some overlap) and that’s only the start of it. Quite why NSW university offers rated so highly might be explained by the fact that NSW newspapers now provide precious little coverage of the event. The seemingly generous pay arrangements of vice-chancellors certainly attracted reader interest (and good on The Oz for pulling the story together) and academic gongs remains a perennial favourite. However, the weightiest issue of the year in higher education was the late Abbott government’s deregulation package which died ignominiously in the Senate and led to then minister Christopher Pyne’s manic performance as The Fixerin an interview with David Speers on Sky News.

3 March 2015 | One of Australia’s biggest private training providers is being accused of using salespeople who target disadvantaged areas and enrol poor students with fake entrance exams. Last financial year Careers Australia billed taxpayers for almost $110 million in VET FEE-HELP loans. Former sales broker Chris Chambers confirmed that sales brokers were taking the entrance exams for potential students, and claimed he saw it happen 40 to 50 times.

20 January 2015 | As in Victoria, the traditional January main round of university offers in NSW, through the University Admissions Centre (UAC), is decreasing in prominence in the calendar. Offers through the year and direct offers are becoming increasingly the norm. This year, universities have made 46,507 offers through UAC ‘s main round, down 4,307 (- 9%) on last year.

15 June 2015 | Australia’s highest paid vice-chancellor, Michael Spence (University of Sydney) saw his salary package increase by $120,000 last year to reach $1.3 million, an analysis of annual reports by The Australian shows. He was followed by Greg Craven from the Australian Catholic University ($1.2m); Glyn Davis, University of Melbourne ($1.08m); and Peter Coaldrake, Queensland University of Technology ($1.06m). In all, seven vice-chancellors had salary packages over $1m, including two who left or retired. At the other end of the spectrum, the analysis of 2014 annual reports showed Kerry Cox, the recently retired head of Edith Cowan University, to be the country’s lowest paid vice-chancellor on $540,000.

22 April 2015 | Private training provider Vocation has been forced to recall more than 1,000 of its qualifications, including hundreds in child care and aged care, after Victorian regulators found the courses were sub-standard. Almost 200 students who completed a Certificate III in Child Care, 250 students who completed a Certificate III in Aged Care, and 383 students with a double qualification of business studies will have to hand back their qualifications and inform their employers. A total of 832 students, who all studied with Vocation in Melbourne between January until June last year, are affected. This latest audit by the Victorian Registration and Qualification Authority (VRQA) follows an investigation last year which found about 6,000 students had studied sub-standard courses. More than 3,500 qualifications were recalled, and Vocation was forced to repay $19.6 million in state government funding.

15 February 2015 | The new Victorian Labor government has announced a comprehensive, independent review of the funding of Victoria’s vocational education and training (VET) system, as presaged during the election campaign. Minister for training and skills Steve Herbert says the VET Funding Review will provide a more sustainable model for public TAFE Institutes and private training providers. Government contributions to public TAFEs fell from $733 million in 2011 to $468 million in 2014, leaving many TAFEs at risk of financial collapse.

12 February 2015 | Labor, the Greens and four independent senators (Senators Xenophon, Lambie, Muir, Rhiannon and Lazarus) have joined forces to establish another inquiry into higher education reform, to report by 17 March. The committee will consider alternatives to deregulation, likely future demand for places and implications on student loans, research infrastructure and regional provision. The inquiry will also look to investigate “the appropriateness and accuracy of government -advertising in support of higher education measures” and “other related matters”. University of Canberra vice-chancellor Stephen Parker, a strident opponent of the government package, says that the government’s failure to review any options to deregulation was both a “process failure” and “a democratic failure because it wasn’t flagged at the last election and it was even denied at the election.”

26 January 2015 | Six hundred and thirty five Australians have been recognised with Orders of Australia on Australia Day 2015, while a further 59 military and 130 meritorious awards were announced. Members of the tertiary education sector featured strongly in the honours list, with 81 awards, particularly in the upper categories. People associated with the tertiary sector received 4 out of the 5 Companion awards (80%), 16 out of 38 Officer awards were to people associated with the tertiary sector (42%), 46 of 156 Member awards (29.5%), for a 33% of the higher awards. In the most common category of Medal, only 15 of 434 awards were tertiary sector related people (3.4%). Women continue to be under represented with 33% of all awards, mainly in the Medal category. Only four of the tertiary sector awards were to people in the VET sector.

29 June 2015 | The Victorian Government is launching a major blitz to crackdown on “dodgy” training providers in order to lift standards in sector. A review by Deloitte has revealed widespread abuses, including qualifications being issued to students who have no demonstrable skills, inappropriate marketing practices, short course duration, providers claiming government funding for non-existent training delivery and poor oversight of third parties delivering training. Skills minister Steve Herbert said that since November 2014, the government has had to restore funding eligibility for more than 10,000 students who gained inadequate qualifications, and has found dubious practices in a range of qualification areas.

28 October 2015 | The Commonwealth government has released a synthesis report of the past seven reviews of higher education over the past 30 years rather than conducting a further separate review in the wake of its failed higher education reform package. Education minister Simon Birmingham told the Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Summit said that the government is under intense time pressures to come up with a new and revitalised higher education reform package after its the package devised by former education minister Christopher Pyne was rejected by the Senate twice, largely due to intense community opposition over the plan to deregulate university fees.

With the Labor Party poised to form a minority government in Queensland, its promise to rescue the TAFE sector will now come into sharper Focus. Queensland VET student numbers fell 38,000 in 2013.During the election campaign, Labor leader and soon to be premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (who pronounces her surname as “Pallashay”) made a number of commitments to address the vocational educational and training system.

A century ago, in November 1915, physicist Albert Einstein unveiled a theory that would change the world — general relativity. ABC science reporter Bernie Hobbs explains this mind bending theory – the development of which was driven by experiments that took place mostly in Einstein’s brain (that is, so-called “thought experiments”) .

From Forbes Magazine

“The Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion research vehicle is offering a vision of autonomous driving in the future. The luxury saloon with total connectivity gives a preview of how the self-driving car of the future could become a platform for communication and interaction.”

As selected by the staff of Dymocks

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“An emotionally-charged and often traumatic novel that is sure to shock you. Be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster, the likes of which I have never before experienced from a book. It’s my must-read title of 2015.”

From The New York Times

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“This was the year of the great unravelling, with international orders and borders challenged or broken, with thousands of deaths, vast flows of migrants and terrorist attacks on some of the most cherished symbols of civilization, both Western and Muslim.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….……

A child standing near police controlling a rush of refugees into Macedonia.

From Spotify’s playlist

See

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From Vogue Magazine

“I’ve never seen a Cannes screening more hushed than it was during Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s story about a reluctant female assassin (ravishing Shu Qi) during the Tang Dynasty. Although the story is a bit puzzling and rarefied—Hou plunges us right into 9th-century China—the film is a triumph of pure cinema, staggeringly beautiful in its evocation of a distant time and sensibility. It has the mysterious radiance of a Vermeer.”

On account of other pressing matters in 2015 published editions of The Scan, with a completely refreshed front page heralded to subscribers by an e-newsletter, were down quite a bit – just 21 in 2015 compared to 40 in in 2014. Nevertheless, some 350 items were posted, which is about 8 a week in The Scan’s year, a little down on the 10 items posted a week last year.

Traffic to the Scan website remained strong, down about 20% on last year’s figures. The Scan’s now extensive archive of nearly 3000 posts creates “organic” traffic: over one third of all Scan traffic now flows from search engines and referrals.

Regular readers will have noticed the little ads at the bottom of each page and post. We get paid a teensy weensy amount every time an ad is clicked: over the past three years those ads have contributed $88.02 to Scan coffers.

Most Scan visitors are located in Australia but we do have a small international readership, with visitors from about 100 countries in 2015. This is dominated by visitors from the US (6% of total traffic) who number about double every other country combined, followed by the UK with about 1% of the total.

This year’s top ten reads were heavily skewed towards the “VET crisis” and attempts by authorities (rather belatedly in our view) to stamp out the obvious rorting, particularly in VET FEE-HELP funding, which has been truly scandalous. In fact, the number one post this year on The Scan is also the number one post of all time and by quite a bit. If you enter “rorting” in the search box in the top right hand corner, the archive runs to 5 pages, VET FEE-HELP runs to another 5 pages (obviously with some overlap) and that’s only the start of it. Quite why NSW university offers rated so highly might be explained by the fact that NSW newspapers now provide precious little coverage of the event. The seemingly generous pay arrangements of vice-chancellors certainly attracted reader interest (and good on The Oz for pulling the story together) and academic gongs remains a perennial favourite. However, the weightiest issue of the year in higher education was the late Abbott government’s deregulation package which died ignominiously in the Senate and led to then minister Christopher Pyne’s manic performance as The Fixer in an interview with David Speers on Sky News.

3 March 2015 | One of Australia’s biggest private training providers is being accused of using salesmen who target disadvantaged areas and enrol poor students with fake entrance exams.Careers Australia is a market leader in vocational education, with 16 campuses across five states and 14,000 students, and is expanding rapidly by engaging door-to-door salespeople to sign up new students to courses funded by the Federal Government. Last financial year Careers Australia billed taxpayers for almost $110 million in VET FEE-HELP loans. Former sales broker Chris Chambers confirmed that sales brokers were taking the entrance exams for potential students, and claimed he saw it happen 40 to 50 times. These literacy language and numeracy tests were to gauge the eligibility of the student to actually complete the course and potentially pay off their VET FEE debt. Chambers alleged that communities with high welfare dependence like Hobart’s Bridgewater, Gagebrook and Herdsmans Cove were deliberately targeted.

20 January 2015 | As in Victoria, the traditional January main round of university offers in NSW, through the University Admissions Centre (UAC), is decreasing in prominence in the calendar. Offers through the year and direct offers are becoming increasingly the norm. This year, universities have made 46,507 offers through UAC ‘s main round, down 4,307 (- 9%) on last year. But the total number of offers to date is actually up a little, at 76,339, up 1,542 ( + 2%) from last year’s 74,792. So, main round offers through UAC are now about 62% compared to 68% last year and almost 100% four or five years ago.

15 June 2015 | Australia’s highest paid vice-chancellor saw his salary package increase by $120,000 last year to reach $1.3 million, an analysis of annual reports by The Australian shows. Michael Spence, head of the University of Sydney, topped the list of 37 vice-chancellors, followed by Greg Craven from the Australian Catholic University ($1.2m); Glyn Davis, University of Melbourne ($1.08m); and Peter Coaldrake, Queensland University of Technology ($1.06m). In all, seven vice-chancellors had salary packages over $1m, including two who left or retired. At the other end of the spectrum, the analysis of 2014 annual reports showed Kerry Cox, the recently retired head of Edith Cowan University, to be the country’s lowest paid vice-chancellor on $540,000. The analysis shows that the average salary was $835,000. Male vice-chancellors earned, on average, $853,000 while their eight female counterparts earned an average of $769,000.

22 April 2015 | Private training provider Vocation has been forced to recall more than 1,000 of its qualifications, including hundreds in child care and aged care, after Victorian regulators found the courses were sub-standard. Almost 200 students who completed a Certificate III in Child Care, 250 students who completed a Certificate III in Aged Care, and 383 students with a double qualification of business studies will have to hand back their qualifications and inform their employers. A total of 832 students, who all studied with Vocation in Melbourne between January until June last year, are affected. This latest audit by the Victorian Registration and Qualification Authority (VRQA) follows an investigation last year which found about 6,000 students had studied sub-standard courses. More than 3,500 qualifications were recalled, and Vocation was forced to repay $19.6 million in state government funding.

15 February 2015 | The new Victorian Labor government has announced a comprehensive, independent review of the funding of Victoria’s vocational education and training (VET) system, as presaged during the election campaign. Minister for training and skills Steve Herbert says the VET Funding Review will provide a more sustainable model for public TAFE Institutes and private training providers. According to Herbert, the former Liberal government left Victoria’s training sector in crisis. Government contributions to public TAFEs fell from $733 million in 2011 to $468 million in 2014, leaving many TAFEs at risk of financial collapse. At the same time, Herbert says the former government’s constant changes to subsidy rates have caused confusion and made it difficult to make long-term plans for private providers. These sudden and repeated changes caused financial instability, undermining the ability of both TAFEs and private training providers to support Victoria’s growing industries.

12 February 2015 | Labor, the Greens and four independent senators (Senators Xenophon, Lambie, Muir, Rhiannon and Lazarus) have joined forces to establish another inquiry into higher education reform, to report by 17 March. The committee will consider alternatives to deregulation, likely future demand for places and implications on student loans, research infrastructure and regional provision. The inquiry will also look to investigate “the appropriateness and accuracy of government -advertising in support of higher education measures” and “other related matters”. University of Canberra vice-chancellor Stephen Parker expects the legislation will be rejected for a second time by the Senate and wants to encourage a national discussion on alternatives to deregulation. University of Canberra vice-chancellor Parker, a strident opponent of the government package, says that the government’s failure to review any options to deregulation was both a “process failure” and “a democratic failure because it wasn’t flagged at the last election and it was even denied at the election.”

26 January 2015 | Six hundred and thirty five Australians have been recognised with Orders of Australia on Australia Day 2015, while a further 59 military and 130 meritorious awards were announced. Members of the tertiary education sector featured strongly in the honours list, with 81 awards, particularly in the upper categories. People associated with the tertiary sector received 4 out of the 5 Companion awards (80%), 16 out of 38 Officer awards were to people associated with the tertiary sector (42%), 46 of 156 Member awards (29.5%), for a 33% of the higher awards. In the most common category of Medal, only 15 of 434 awards were tertiary sector related people (3.4%). Women continue to be under represented with 33% of all awards, mainly in the Medal category. Only four of the tertiary sector awards were to people in the VET sector.

29 June 2015 | The Victorian Government is launching a major blitz to crackdown on “dodgy” training providers in order to lift standards in sector. A review by Deloitte has revealed widespread abuses, including qualifications being issued to students who have no demonstrable skills, inappropriate marketing practices, short course duration, providers claiming government funding for non-existent training delivery and poor oversight of third parties delivering training. Skills minister Steve Herbert said that since November 2014, the government has had to restore funding eligibility for more than 10,000 students who gained inadequate qualifications, and has found dubious practices in a range of qualification areas. He said the Government will spend $9 million on auditing, interviewing students, ensuring the paperwork was right and make sure they were getting “high-quality” training. The priority is to crackdown on providers who are doing short course delivery about which there have been complaints and are suspected of not providing quality training.

28 October 2015 | The Commonwealth government has released a synthesis report of the past seven reviews of higher education over the past 30 years rather than conducting a further separate review in the wake of its failed higher education reform package. Education minister Simon Birmingham told the Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Summit said that the government is under intense time pressures to come up with a new and revitalised higher education reform package after its the package devised by former education minister Christopher Pyne was rejected by the Senate twice, largely due to intense community opposition over the plan to deregulate university fees. The background paper summarises the findings of each major review of higher education from the 1988 Dawkins White Paper to the 2014 Kemp-Norton Review of the Demand Driven Funding System.

With the Labor Party poised to form a minority government in Queensland, its promise to rescue the TAFE sector will now come into sharper Focus. Queensland VET student numbers fell 38,000 in 2013.During the election campaign, Labor leader and soon to be premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (who pronounces her surname as “Pallashay”) made a number of commitments to address the vocational educational and training system.